Technology in the Real Estate industry is changing the world and saving building owners, operators and tenants millions of dollars in the process. Real Estate, for those who do not know this, is traditionally a place where things move slowly. For those who are outside the Real Estate industry, think about the time it takes to build and purchase a new home. It is not as simple as purchasing a candy bar from a vending machine.

Technology in the Real Estate industry also moves slowly and while other industries have made progress at break neck speeds, Real Estate has been a late adopter. There are, however, several reasons why Real Estate is becoming an interesting arena for technologists. Today I had the privilege of attending a webinar hosted by Realcomm where real estate technology companies presented some of those reasons. Spoiler alert: The best reason is millions of dollars saved; I really like that reason and every company featured here has the ability to do just that!

With the objective to lower costs, reduce risks and enhance experience, Intelligent Buildings is a leader in smart building consulting. As more and more building operators focus on really knowing how their buildings operate so that they can be more profitable, Intelligent Buildings offers valuable insight into how to know what buildings are doing in order to reduce operating costs. While many older buildings have escaped the need to improve performance by passing most energy costs onto tenants per the terms of leases, regulation is coming into play requiring higher performance. Tenants are also demanding more efficient facilities in order to reduce their utility costs. Low-performance is no longer acceptable. Intelligent Buildings helps improve performance by collecting available data and using advanced software technology to find patterns and identify opportunities for savings, savings in the millions.

You’re in an elevator, the lights flicker and a moment later you’re enveloped in darkness and the movement stops. Claustrophobia! Agoraphobia! Whether this is something that haunts your nightmares or has actually happened to you, it certainly is not something you want to experience. Selex ES is using technology to do amazing things, including preventing the aforementioned trapped in an elevator situation. In large power outages like the major blackout in New York City, utility providers know 30 to 40 seconds before an outage that an outage will occur. By connecting that valuable information from power suppliers to building elevator systems, an elevator can be instructed to stop at the next floor and open the doors seconds before the lights flicker and the world goes dark. Hooray for technology making life more bearable!

Selex ES can do more than make life more bearable. What would you do if you came home from work, opened the utility bill and it was $3,000 for last month? Most people would experience some sort of anxiety. What most people don’t realize is during certain periods of the year, it is not uncommon to spend $3,000 an hour or more for the energy needs of a large office building. You read that right, $3,000 hour. At this rate of consumption, even small changes in energy use can make or break the budget. Selex ES brings the data from various sensors in a building together to produce energy savings and at the same time increase occupant comfort. You see, building operators are under obligation per the terms of leases to provide a comfortable climate for building occupants. Building operators cannot simply turn down the heat when it gets too cold outside and turn down the AC when it is a scorcher outside. By monitoring temperatures and occupancy closely, though, they can adjust how much energy is used to heat and cool a building. One sample implementation resulted in reducing electrical consumption by 10%, a savings of over $1 million a year!

Fischer believes in a simple process to adding value through technology. In real estate, simple is key and their solutions are designed by real estate experts. By aggregating data, visualizing that data in meaningful ways, automating business processes based on insight from the visualization and then reporting the results, Fischer guides real estate businesses on a path to leveraging technology to generate cost savings. One client saved $4 million over a period of two years by taking disparate systems and automating processes.

There are tags on our cloths, our food and literally everything we consume. We tag our photos, we hash tag our tweets, we tag blog posts. Sky Foundry takes tagging to the next level in the real estate world by using tags in various disparate building systems in order to leverage big data and turn data into actionable insight. This results in cost savings worth millions of dollars. Now tag that!